UK Immigration News

The British Embassies in Bucharest, Romania and Sofia, Bulgaria have announced that visa applications under the European Community Association Agreement (ECAA) will resume from 1 September 2004.

Following new procedures that resulted from the Sutton enquiry conducted after the ECAA visa scandal earlier this year, now all applicants will be asked to attend an interview at the relevant British Embassy, by appointment only.

The Home Office has recently released guidance notes concerning the new requirement for naturalisation applicants to provide evidence of sufficient knowledge of the English language when making an application for citizenship.

The guidance notes cover the ways people can show that their English skills reaches the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Entry 3 level.

The IND has announced that from 23 August anyone applying for entry clearance to the UK as a Minister of Religion will need to provide evidence that they speak English.

If it is not clear from an entry clearance application that the individual certainly speaks English, applicants will have to provide an IELTS certificate showing that they have achieved a band score of at least 4 in spoken English. The certificate should not be more than two years old at the date of making the entry clearance application.

Information about cases currently under consideration by the UK Home Office’s Immigration and Nationality Directorate as of Aug. 16, 2004:Category:

IND designates groups capable of determining English proficiency

The UK’s Secretary of State on Aug. 13, 2004, designated the following persons as competent to determine that an applicant has sufficient knowledge of English for the purposes of naturalization, when that applicant has produced an educational qualification other than an ESOL Entry 3 Certificate as described in the DfES "Adult ESOL core curriculum". A teacher will be a designated person if he or she meets the following criteria:

Language Teachers with one of the following qualifications:

New UK naturalization regulations were announced by the IND yesterday that require all applicants for naturalization, including those who are married to British citizens, to have a sufficient level of English language skills and to provide evidence that they meet this language requirement.

Applicants can show that they meet this requirement in one of two ways, by either: